This invention relates to railroad car hand brake mechanisms and more particularly to a mechanism for applying a hand brake force to sets of brakes acting on wheels at opposite ends of a railroad car to prevent movement of the car.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,742, issued May 30, 1978 describes a stacked container well hole gondola car. Further, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 153,470 filed May 27, 1980, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,315,465 issued Feb. 16, 1982, discloses a series of such cars wherein adjoining ends of adjacent cars are supported on a common truck. The car described in the patent has a first set of brakes acting on wheels at one end of the car and a second set of brakes acting on wheels at the other end of the car. For the series of cars described in the application, a first set of brakes acts on wheels at the outer end of the car while a second set of brakes acts on wheels mounted on the common truck at the other end of the car. In each instance, the first set of brakes acts on wheels located on one side of the railroad car while the second set of brakes acts on wheels located on the opposite side of the car. This is done to prevent inadvertent setting of brakes which could occur if, for example, both sets of brakes were located on the same side of the car and it went around a curb sharp enough so foreshortening of the brake linkages caused the brake pads to contact the wheels. Since the sets of brakes are located on opposite sides of the car, it is necessary to transfer the brake application force produced by operation of a hand brake typically located at one end of the car not only to the set of brakes located at that end of the car but also to the other end of the car and transversely across the car. A major problem in accomplishing this for the cars described in the aforementioned patent and patent application is that the cars described therein have depressed center sections which preclude a simple or conventional linkage arrangement of the types found on other types of railroad cars.